


Feverdream

by Hezjena2023



Series: Rituals!Verse - Red Riding Hood [1]
Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types
Genre: 'In Another World', Angst, Bittersweet Ending, Everyone is great at spying, F/M, Fake Dating, Fake Dating to Lovers, Fluff, I'm sorry?, Romance, Solavellan hell in Elvhenan, Solavellan hell is inescapable, The epilogue is a downer, Trope: Fake Dating, Trope: it was a dream all along, Tropes: oh no someone’s coming better kiss, Young Solas (Dragon Age), a throughly self indulgent fic, all of my evanuris and forgotten one headcanons, like they're all awful, tasteful arse grabbing, the evanuris being corrupt asshats, the weird and unusual politics of Elvhenan
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-04
Updated: 2020-11-08
Packaged: 2021-03-08 19:08:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 17,321
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27391732
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hezjena2023/pseuds/Hezjena2023
Summary: Without meaning to, Iseshena glanced up at the new voice and found two disturbing things. First, it was the man that had been watching her on the street as she fed the miniature griffons, but two she knew exactly who he was. The upstart, Andruil’s cast off, the ‘rebel’ that had stolen Elgar’nan’s Golden City off him - Fen’Harel.What was he doing here? What did he want with her?***If she has a rare and marvelous spirit, what would have happened if Iseshena had been born 4000 years before? But, even in Ancient Elvhenan, there is no escape from Solavellan hell.
Relationships: Female Lavellan/Solas
Series: Rituals!Verse - Red Riding Hood [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1827190
Comments: 64
Kudos: 26





	1. Feeding the Griffons

**Author's Note:**

> I just want to say and absolutely massive thank you to the wonderful, the hilarious, the fantastic [PiecesofSolas](https://archiveofourown.org/users/piecesofsolas) for both proofreading my madness, but also for all the encouragement and love you've shown me over the past few months. 
> 
> And for reminding me that it was okay to just let these two goobers fall in love <3

Iseshena Lavellan sat by the little wall overlooking the expansive fields of June’s estate. The Craftsman god had called in Architects from across Elvhenan to serve on a new building project. She was lucky enough to have been picked, although she doubted that her skills were good enough to have merited the four year stint away from home - but there she was, regardless. Doing her duty. 

One year in, she still didn’t really feel at home here, under the watchful eye of the Craftsman. But, on the bright sunny day, she had managed to escape for her lunch period to sketch some of the aqueducts that ferried freshwater into the bronze-orange city of June. It was not that Iseshena overly misliked the city, it was beautifully designed, as it should have been. 

Although perhaps too much relianced has been placed upon bronze as decoration, as though anyone could forget June’s great achievement of mixing copper and tin to form a new alloy, stronger and more durable than what had been used before. And it gave her the impression of a one-trick hart, the god June, repeatedly boasting of his singular achievement. 

But she didn’t dare say that aloud. 

What she did dare was to funnel her frustration into the shading underneath one of the arches of the aqueduct, pressing so hard the point of her shard of coal broke off in her hand. 

Cursing, she stood up, letting her drawing papers fall to the ground. She was about to rub at her face, but realised her hands were covered in black stains from the coal and had no option but to wipe them down the front of her leggings. 

Her good mood turned foul, she gathered up her materials to return to her office. She hadn’t finished her lunch, a savoury pie that she’d bought from a little stall in the market place near where she lived. She found she didn’t have the appetite for it anymore. 

But she did pick off the crust to feed to the toy-griffons that littered the streets. They were barely bigger than a two-hand span with their wings fully extended. Cooing softly, they began excitedly fighting over the scraps of pastry that she gave them, delighted for a meal they had not had to forage. 

Iseshena felt a stab of pity for the miniature griffons that had been bred to be pets for the barefaced nobility, but they’d been too temperamental and after merely a couple hundred years, they had ended up discarded on the streets to live eating through people’s garbage. Squawking and screeching in protest if anyone without food dared to came too close. 

A rumour carried on the wind, spoke of the goddess Ghilan’nain turning her attention to the griffons, breeding them to be large enough to ride. But, Iseshena doubted it as fanciful talk and nothing else. 

When she was done, she brushed off her hands and found herself being watched, practically caught in a man’s eyes. 

The Stranger was hooded in a finely woven cloak, his ears poking through slits in the fabric. His gaze piercing and blue as the noon-day sky and he’d been watching her feeding the griffons. He was tall, broad shoulders, lean.  _ Attractive. _

But, even with his face shadowed by the hood, Iseshena couldn’t pick out any lines of  _ vallaslin, _ so she dropped her eyes to the ground. Her heart in her throat, she didn’t know why he’d been watching her. She froze not wanting to invoke his ire. Thinking furiously that she didn’t like this City, the birthplace of  _ vallaslin,  _ where the nobility were quicker to anger and treated those with June’s marks rather like the tiny griffons on the street.

Was he about to tell her off for feeding the pests of the Bronze City? 

Precious heart beats trickled by and he did not approach, she risked glancing up again. But luckily he was gone. 

Iseshena tried to shake the strange encounter when she got back to her office space. Shrugging off her jacket and throwing it over the back of her chair. In the Architects suite she had been supplied with a desk, rolls of paper to make blueprints and an objective, in a room with forty identical stations. 

_ ‘Make something of this red-coloured lyrium that Andruil had found in the depths.’  _

Which was all very well, but they hadn’t been allowed to study this new material. Or touch it, or even see it. Or even been told what made the red lyrium different from the blue stuff that the Dwarven Empire mined and sold to them. 

About once every two weeks one of the Architects went to see it, but none had returned yet. Slowly whittling their number down. And of the Architects that were left, a sense of competition had overcome them, turning friend against friend. In a final push to create something, anything of note.

But, Iseshena had stopped caring about the competition when the friends she had made in their first week had all disappeared, leaving her without anyone to talk to throughout the day. 

She was lonely - not that she would admit it. 

Iseshena looked over what she had spent her morning creating, a clock, the simple thought that perhaps a shard of the red lyrium could keep better time than a blue shard. She grimaced at her morning’s work, worried that her designs might just be terrible enough that she would be sent home in disgrace Mythal’s city to her Mother’s house? She grinned,  _ she bloody well hoped so.  _

“Lavellan,” a stoney-faced woman with June’s  _ vallaslin _ slapped across her face in an ugly fuschia colour approached Iseshena’s desk. “He wants to see you.”

There was no need to tell Iseshena who he was, but she felt the blood drain out of her face, regardless. She had never personally met June, only spied him from across a large hall on their first induction day; he had given the group a half-hearted blessing before leaving the stoney-faced woman, his High Priest had taken over to give out their instructions. 

“I, but, what?” Iseshena managed to stammer out, realising that she had coal-stains down her leggings. Her curls were spilling out of their tie around her face, and she was still a pinch out of breath from walking back up the steep hill to the office. 

A little giddily she thought perhaps it was her turn to see what the red lyrium was. 

The miserable woman only glared at her, fuschia  _ vallaslin _ pulled tight creating a disagreeable shape across her features, “I don’t know why. Best not to leave him waiting.”

“Yes, right.” Iseshena agreed, her hands fluttering uselessly over her designs, wondering if any of them were worth showing June.

“Leave them. He wanted to see you, not that.” The Priestess told her firmly, as though she was an idiot. 

But, with that decided for her, Iseshena pulled her jacket back over her shoulders and took a breath. 

June’s throne room was tiled in little squares of burnt umber and bronze, creating a spreading ant’s nest design that spread out across the expansive room. But, the grout in between them had been inexpertly done and the corners of the tiles were digging into Iseshena’s knees. 

Above them, the ceiling was doomed, but somber. There was little light. Without murals hanging on the wall, or rugs across the floor, the space echoed every small sound. Iseshena’s heart was hammering out a pattern so loud she was sure that it was audible twenty paces away. For being summoned so demandingly, June was content to leave her waiting there. 

_ Had he discovered her designs were half-arsed at best and bored doodles at worst? Well, she thought hotly, it was difficult to have any passion for a project she didn’t choose and wasn’t allowed to really understand.  _

Footsteps approached, Iseshena kept her head bowed and her eyes to the floor. She could just make out the hem of June’s bronzed-orange robe, and she tried not to smirk at how obvious he was.  _ “Ma Evanuris,” _ she whispered as politely as she could. 

“This is the one?” A deep voice asked, so deep that it seemed to shake through her bones. But, June wasn’t addressing her. 

Iseshena frowned at this turn of events, but didn’t look up. Didn’t dare to. 

“Yes,” a different voice replied, softer, smoother. With an accent from the eastern part of the Empire, from near the Amaranthine Coast. 

Without meaning to, Iseshena glanced up at the new voice, for only a heartbeat before fixing her eyes firmly back on the badly grouted tiles. 

She had discovered two disturbing things. First, the voice belonged to the man that had been watching her on the street as she fed the griffons, but two she knew exactly who he was: 

The upstart, Andruil’s cast off, the ‘rebel’ that had stolen Elgar’nan’s Golden City off him - Fen’Harel. 

_ Right.  _

_ What was he doing here? What did he want with her? _

_ “Ma Evanuris,” _ she repeated. It was only polite, although Fen’Harel lived somewhere on the merky edge of the Evanuris, both one of them and not. Maybe it wasn’t polite? Her voice cracked, as she said it. 

“Take her then,” June prompted, already sounding disinterested in the whole affair. 

“She is not yours to give,” Fen’Harel returned.

June made a noise as though he agreed, “yet you came into my City to see her, I will not stand in your way.” Then the god June, sniffed and hit Iseshena with a bolt of mana so suddenly that she recoiled across the ground. 

Iseshena was thrown into her front, her face on fire, her  _ vallaslin  _ stinging worse than the day it was tattooed into her skin, the pale pink lines of Mythal’s tree branches seared like the burning heat of the stoked hearth. She willed herself not to cry, but it was too much, too painful, silently tears rolled down her face as the blood magic in her  _ vallaslin _ was overridden, removed, dissolved. The pigment tried to escape her skin, all while the magic that it encapsulated protested at being corrupted and fought to stay there. 

She clawed at her face with her nails, as though that might help. The war under the skin finally was won and she slumped, face wet from tears onto the tiles, shivering and exhausted and on a high of adrenaline. Her body wrapping itself in shock to protect her from the pain. 

“That was unnecessary,” Fen’Harel told June, the disgust rolling off him in waves, that even lying on the floor in searing pain Iseshena could feel them battering against her. “I could have handled it.” 

“Consider it insurance,  _ my friend.” _ June slapped him hard upon the back, so forcefully that the sound echoed off the stone walls. “Now you can’t give her back if you get bored.”

Iseshena had closed her eyes when the woman left and pressed her cheek against the cool stone wall to try to rid herself of some of the residual heat in her face. 

“I am sorry,” Fen’Harel told her, after Iseshena had been picked up off the floor by the High Priest of June, led to a side chamber and deposited on a hard wooden stool. 

She jumped when he spoke, she hadn’t heard him come into the room. Her gaze met his for the third time that day before she remembered it was wisest to look away. She tried to offer an address but couldn’t make her mouth move, her ribs still ached from being thrown to the ground by June’s spell. There were no mirrors in the room, but she knew that her  _ vallaslin _ had been taken, and she was no longer under the protection of Mythal. 

Fen’Harel moved around the little room like a caged beast, his steps quick and sharp. Indecision plagued him. He seemed to make a choice and took a knee beside the seated woman.

Iseshena tried to protest the action, to beg for just a moment's respite before he applied new  _ vallaslin _ to her face. She remembered how painful the process had been the first time, but couldn’t choke out the sounds. As his hand drew near her face she shut her eyes tightly and waited. 

It felt like cool water across her skin. 

She peeked open an eye, then the other. Openly gawping at him. It had been a healing spell, nothing more. An unexpected kindness. 

“I have no  _ vallaslin _ to give,” he told her, unprompted, slight smile tugging at his lips. Likely a reaction to her surprise. “As I said, I am sorry for involving you in this.” 

A word finally came to her lips, “why?”

Fen’Harel looked stricken, a frown deep into the furrows of his brows and Iseshena was quite sure that she had overstepped by questioning the god. But, he shifted a little uncomfortable and replied, “they caught me, watching you feed the griffons.” 

“I don’t understand.” 

“Simply put, I lied about my reason for being in the city,” he offered. His tongue poked out to wet his lips, the slightest stain of a blush across his cheeks.

“You said you were watching me?” Iseshena worked out, feeling cold, like snowmelt had been poured down her back. That would explain it, and he didn’t deny her reasoning, just looked glum. She pressed forward, “so why are you here?”

He pressed back, standing in a single smooth motion. “How are you feeling?” Fen’Harel asked in a clipped tone that told her sharply that the discussion was over.

“Fine,” she lied, pressing her hand against her cheek and wiping some of the salt-stained tear tracks away. “Can I go home?”

Fen’Harel looked at her, like her reluctant executioner, “no.” 

The once Golden City of Elgar’nan was still soot-stained from the battle where Fen’Harel had claimed it, decades before. When he led her out of the Eluvian, Iseshena felt like she matched, with coal-stains still on her leggings. The hallway stunk of smoke and decay. She wrinkled her nose at the stench and then tried to hide the action. He noticed, but seemed amused by it. 

Fen’Harel was not like the Family, that much was clear. She didn’t know if he could be trusted. He was not an Evanuris through blood, but by conquest. The ruins of the City they were in was proof enough of the consequences of his wrath. So far he had been kind to her, even looking adequately guilty for involving her in his business. While, keeping cryptically quiet about his real reasons for being in June’s City. 

After a silence that stretched on a little too long, Fen’Harel tried to probe more information out of her. “You asked to go home, where is home?” His tone was conversational, almost friendly, as they walked through the burnt out ruins. As though that was enough to get her to trust him.

Fen’Harel trying to be polite and put her on edge. 

Iseshena considered lying, but decided against it. “Mythal’s City, my family is there.”

The not-quite Evanuris studied her for a long time, going so far as to stop in his tracks. His lips downturned, he looked genuinely ashamed, “you are stuck here for the moment,” he offered, looking a little displeased with the concept. “If I were to send you back to June, he would mark you as his own and you would not be permitted to leave.”

She nodded, “I know.” 

Behind them the Eluvian roared back to life, but for a heartbeat Iseshena thought it was something that she had done as Fen’Harel was bathed in lyrium-blue light.

A slight figure approached, barefooted. Barely taller than Iseshena wearing a simple tunic and leggings, a spear strapped to her back. She barely spared Iseshena a look, instead stopping in front of Fen’Harel, demanding in a clipped, “just what have you done?” 

Behind him was a broken balcony overlooking the whole city. Fen’Harel glanced over it, as though he was considering jumping off to avoid her question. He looked more than a little ashamed, “I was caught Anaris, I did-“

“No, you were careless and you stole an Architect. Not just from June, but from Mythal.” Anaris interrupted. 

Fen’Harel’s eyes widened, his pupils blown wide, the irises darkening just slightly. His voice dropped low, “you’re an Architect?” He ran his hands over his scalp, before he turned and cursed. 

Iseshena nodded, then reached for her face habitually, for Mythal’s protection. But she frowned to find her  _ vallaslin  _ missing underneath her fingertips, only the ache of the removal was still there, cruel and painful. 

“What were you working on?” He demanded of Iseshena, snapping his attention to her. 

“We have bigger issues,” Anaris snapped, clicking her fingers in a sharp gesture that looked like a warding sign, but it snapped his attention to her. “Mythal is furious. June told Andruil, who told Mythal. This is a breach of protocol that will not stand.” She sighed. “There’s two options. You take her back immediately, tell them you’re an idiot and you overstepped. And face the punishment,” she glanced at Iseshena, “you’ll likely be tortured, if not killed.”

Iseshena squeaked without meaning to, a horrible little sound in the back of her throat at Anaris’ dire prediction.

“That is an eventuality we should seek to avoid,” Anaris agreed, rounding back on Fen’Harel. “You need to bind her under your protection, under the law there is no other way.” 

“I have told you, I will not craft vallaslin-“

“I know, but that isn’t what I meant,” Anaris interrupted, “I understand your disgust, but I am speaking of ‘the other way.’” 

“No,” interjected Fen’Harel. “I would not ask her to do that.”

“You’ve already taken her,” Anaris spat. “This is not the time to get precious on technicalities.”

“Sorry, what is it?” Iseshena asked. “Shouldn’t I have a say?” 

Fen’Harel wouldn’t look at her when he explained shortly, “she wants me to marry you.”

“What!” Iseshena gasped, but couldn’t help looking over the man. He wasn’t unattractive, in fact he was quite nice looking. But it was all a bit soon. She shook her head, thinking and then held up a hand in surrender. If the choice was really between that and death... “Can you at least tell me my name?” 

Anaris rolled her eyes at Fen’Harel when he couldn’t answer, “seriously?” She asked, before she smacked him on the arm. 

“Forgive me, I don’t know it.” He muttered, suddenly shy. 

The sound of Iseshena’s laughter was too loud, too poignant in the ruins. “I don’t really have a choice, do it?” She asked them. 

“No, sweet thing,” Anaris offered almost kindly, but she brushed her hands together business-like. “Right, now that that is agreed, I will run damage control. The story is simple, you’re an idiot, my friend, you saw a pretty face and didn’t think about the consequences.” 

Fen’Harel glared at Anaris. “For a Spirit of Wisdom, why do all of your plans end with you telling them that I am an idiot?” 

Anaris cooed at him, “because, they need to underestimate you.”

“Wait, Anaris. Tell them we met in the City of Mythal, a few years back, but she had disappeared recently. When I heard she was in June’s City I rushed there. I didn’t think.” 

“How much of that is true?” Anaris asked with a raised eyebrow, crossing her arms over her chest. Her eyes flicking to Iseshena and resting on her questioningly.

“A good lie always contains elements of truth, you taught me that.” Fen’Harel interjected, but still looked discomforted. 

Anaris nodded, the spear on her back wobbled as she moved back towards the Eluvian, “well you be nice to this one, she’s saving your bubble butt.” 

Fen’Harel growled at her, “you may leave, Anaris.” 

Anaris nudged Iseshena with her elbow, “don’t worry his bark is much worse than his bite.” 

Iseshena didn’t dare make a comment as she looked around the devastation caused by the destruction of the Golden City. Instead she simply nodded, not looking at either of them. 

As the Eluvian illuminated lyrium-blue, Iseshena stepped away, needing a moment to herself to process it all. She withdrew from Fen’Harel to look out over the City. Before her, blackened and ruined streets lay in front of her. It was quite unlike the gorgeous swirling patterns that made up June’s City and nothing like the grid that had formed Mythal’s. 

The City that had belonged to Elgar’nan’s was made of sharp intersecting lines as though someone had scribbled runes into the soil. As her eyes traced over the landscape she wondered if she could read it. There were empty theatres, housing complexes, near the centre of the City was a broken-in shell of a domed temple. The streets were still littered with rubble. 

“They are still trying to get it back,” Fen’Harel told her, interrupting her thoughts with his words and coming to stand beside her to look out over the City. “Any effort I expend in rebuilding would only be destroyed.” 

“Why do you keep it?” Iseshena asked. 

He crossed his arms behind his back, “any resources they expend to take back the Golden City are not being used to bolster their empires or strengthen their reigns.” Fen’Harel shifted, readjusting his footing on the broken balcony. “What is your name?” 

“I’m Iseshena.” 

He repeated her name back to her, accent rolling over the vowels. “I am Solas.”

  
  
  



	2. Wrapped in Red Thread

“So how do we do ‘this?’” Iseshena asked, after the conversation had run headfirst into a stone wall. She said this, because she wasn’t yet prepared to say ‘marriage.’ Even the thought of it made her feel like she needed a sit down and a cup of tea. 

Fen’Harel blinked at her, as though he likewise had been lost in his own thoughts and she had pulled him from them quite abruptly. “We will have to go to Sylaise.” 

“Right.” Iseshena pulled her jacket a little tighter around her shoulders. She had never been to the City of Flame. The closest that she had gotten to Sylaise’s City was when she had once glimpsed plans of the glimmering ruby jewel in the far freezing wastes out West. “Do you think Sylaise will agree to it?” 

He didn’t say anything for a heartbeat, caught in her question as though it was not one that he would have considered.

Waiting for his answer she focused on the destruction of the Golden City, how she was itching to sketch it. Or better yet start redesigning it, she could almost envisage the roadways, which buildings she would knock through, which could be salvaged. The ruins were an opportunity. As her mind’s eye smoothed across the City envisioning the changes she felt calmer. 

“What were you doing with June?” 

“I am an Architect.” Iseshena replied with a little shrug, as though that was answer enough, then she bit her lower lip, wondering how much she should say, “we were working on new lyrium technology.” 

“It just gets better,” Fen’Harel muttered, before, he closed his eyes and rubbed his fingers against his temple to work out a headache. “What colour?” 

She didn’t answer for a moment, wondering if she should even tell him the truth. Technically, it should have been a secret project. But, it wasn’t as though June had specifically forbidden her from telling another of the Evanuris and, he had ample opportunity to lay out exactly what she was and wasn’t allowed to say before he’d stripped her  _ vallaslin _ from her face. “Red lyrium.” 

He stilled, every line in his body went taut. “Have there been any developments?”

Iseshena realised he was afraid, probably knew more about red lyrium than she did, “what do you know of it?”

Fen’Harel growled with annoyance, “has June successfully weaponised it?”

“It’s a weapon?” Iseshena blurted out, whistling low. The knowledge settled uneasily upon Iseshena’s shoulders, but then it shuddered off and fell to the ground. She laughed. The sound was a little hysterical and echoed through the ruins. She clapped her hands over her face, to hide the mirth. “Oh no.”

“What?” Fen’Harel was leaning forwards, his hand on her shoulder, his eyes searching her face.

Iseshena let her hands fall from her face and looking up at him she confessed, “I’ve been designing a clock.” She retorted. Trying her best to look put out, but she didn’t suspect that she’d managed it. “It’s not like I was told that it was a weapon.” 

He rocked back onto his heels, a chuckle upon his lips. “That is sweet.” 

She caught his smile, then looked away from him over the ruins of the Golden City. His words were too close to exactly what she was trying not to think about. “This arrangement,” she faulted, crossing her arms over her chest. “Am I going to be expected to-?” She trailed off, raising an eyebrow to convey her meaning. 

“No, no,” the poor man blushed enough that it stained the tips of his ears. “While you will have to stay close, your time will be your own.” 

Iseshena nodded, not quite able to look at him, she tried to lighten the mood by joking, “so long as you don’t send me back now that you’ve worked out I don’t want to design weapons?” 

But her words were sobering in a way that she had not quite intended. 

“Even if I wanted to send you back, it seems we have no choice.” Fen’Harel said.

The first thing Iseshena noticed when they came out of the Eluvian into Sylaise’s palace was the heat. The oppressive, unrelenting heat. Hot as a desert and the air was thick with perfumed smoke as the day before a storm. 

Iseshena was already sweating before she ventured into the strange garden that encircled the place where the Eluvian had spat them up. It was maddening, a trick of the eye that quite convinced her that she needed new eyes. The garden didn't grow plants, but rather had been designed with shaped rocks that had been strategically placed to give the illusion of foliage while retaining the burnt rust of the iron-rich boulders.

Fen’Harel didn’t wait for her, he set off along a path made of polished bloodstone stepping stones, then seemed to realise that he’d left her behind and stopped abruptly. “Forgive me,” he offered as she caught up, “the quicker we can leave the better.”

“Right,” she agreed, pliantly enough, trying to sneak a better look at the architecture unfurling before them. There were braziers, dotted throughout the environment, all burning and adding to the heat. “Wait,” Iseshena whispered, spotting a thin column that speared the sky and another. Holding up a roof that she could barely make out through the smoke. “There’s a ceiling?” Her statement came out like a question. 

His hands tightened into fists for a single moment, before Fen’Harel dropped back to stand next to her. He pointed up, “this is the Hearth house, that pipe there feeds into the City. There is a network of tunnels underneath that are warmed by the smoke.” 

“Are you telling me that this is underfloor heating on a city-wide scale?” Iseshena gawped back at him, her eyebrows furrowing together as she tried to picture it. 

“The City would freeze without them,” he added, tilting his head towards a woman that was feeding one of the braziers, “the Hearth mistresses.” 

The woman he had indicated was dressed in almost sheer fabric, her face was Marked with Sylaise’s swirling vallaslin that looked like smoke made ink. But, her expression was vacant, as she carefully added wood chips and dried herbs and flowers from a bowl into the brazier in front of her. 

“Sylaise keeps them drugged, so they do not feel the monotony of their work.” Fen’Harel told her dispassionately, but with enough of a smile that it was meant to be reassuring and not utterly horrifying. 

“But why?” She whispered, feeling sick to her stomach. 

“Why what?”

“Why go to the effort of all of this?” Iseshena insisted. 

“Underneath us is one of the richest deposits of ore in Volcanic Aurum ever found in Thedas-”

_ “Ma Evanuris,” _ a soft voice interrupted. The voice belonged to a dreamy wisp-like spirit, that reminded Iseshena of thick honey in the luscious way that it moved. The pearlescent spirit easily fading into the smoke and then its shape reformed. Picking out its face was rather like images in clouds, just as she thought she had found it, it was gone again. “She is expecting you.” 

Fen’Harel nodded and tugged at his collar, he had left his cloak in the Black City, leaving him only in a light shirt and leggings. He fidgeted under the spirit’s gaze, messing with the fabric until it stuck up at an angle. 

“This way,” the spirit guided. 

Without thinking Iseshena grabbed his hand, “hold on,” she murmured, stepping up into her toes to fix his collar back flat. Then she smoothed her hands down his chest, realised what was doing and flinched back so quickly that she almost lost her balance. “Sorry.” 

“Do not be sorry,” Fen’Harel returned, in a stilted voice, his hand tracing where hers had been. 

She stepped away, following the spirit, but when she glanced back she caught him watching her with a curious expression. 

“I know why you are here, Fen’Harel. And the answer is no.” The goddess Sylaise snapped impatiently from her throne. She didn’t rise or even glance up in his direction. In her hand was a crimson sphere no bigger than both her palms pressed together, as she touched it her eyes were frosted over with crimson, a distinctly disturbing look. When she was finished she deposited the sphere carefully in a stand by her throne that was carved like two upstretched hands. 

A tiny voice deep in the back of Iseshena’s head told her that was how Sylaise glimpsed the future. She couldn’t remember where she’d heard that, but she knew that was the Orb of Prophecy.

Sylaise took a drag from a pipe that rested on the edge of her lip, the scent of burning royal elfroot was overpowering, sweet and earthy. She finally turned her crimson gaze upon Fen’Harel, though with every passing heartbeat her vision cleared to leave sharp golden eyes that burned brighter than the sun.

_ The same eyes as Mythal.  _

“Mother’s furious and you’ve pissed off half the Pantheon.” Sylaise informed him without preamble, her words accompanied with thick smoke.

“Sylaise, please, can we not-” 

“Talk about this?” Sylaised countered, flicking her golden gaze to Fen’Harel’s face. She giggled, telling him chirpily, “my friend, you’re going to beg and I will say no.” 

Fen’Harel looked annoyed, he opened his mouth to reply to her, but was cut off with a swish of her fingers.

“Aw, you weren’t going to beg? Are you? Please? No? Maybe you want to threaten me instead?” She puckered her lips and whined mockingly and tapped her nails on the arm of her throne. Then settled back in her chair and took another drag from her elfroot pipe. 

He glared at her, the line in his jaw tight and his teeth locked together. “I am not here to threaten you, my friend.” Though he said the word ‘friend’ like it was a curse. 

Sylaise was unfazed by his temper, instead her voice dropped to a conspiratorial whisper, “are you sure? Even when I inform you that I know about your little project. That one. The one that you think no one knows about. Yes, the one that you’re working on with Anaris for the past,” she waved a bored hand, “how long has it been? Do you even remember? Regardless. I know about it.” 

That did seem to put him on the back foot, his glare diminished, his lips parted ready with excuses and denials. 

Sylaise fixed him with a look, before she jabbed her pipe towards Iseshena spilling sacred ash down the front of her floaty dress. “Your Hetaera’s going to help you with it.” 

That caused Fen’Harel to look at Iseshena, eyes wide and edging towards alarm. 

“So then,” Sylaise grinned and let out a molasses laugh, “you’re going to come to me with a deal.” 

It was a lot to process and Fen’Harel looked rather like she’d slapped him clean across the face. He stuck out his jaw as he considered her words, flashing Iseshena an obsidian dark look. His words were barely kinder than a growl as he asked, “and then you’ll say no to whatever I can come up with?” 

Sylaise threw her head back, running a hand through her black hair that ran loose and wavy around her shoulders, “no.” 

“What do you want?” He demanded, his voice biting at the very edge of courtesy. 

The goddess pouted at him, “surprise me Dread Wolf.” 

Iseshena wondered if that was her moment to speak, but Fen’Harel flicked out an annoyed quick gesture to hold her back when he heard her inhale. 

His fingers slammed back against his sides and curled into fists, “and how can I do that, if you know what I’m going to do?”

“Ugh, don’t be boring.” Sylaise complained, “why is everyone always so boring?” She twisted a strand of her hair around her finger and then looked up smugly, “June told me to reject this sorry affair out of hand, he feels he’s been slighted, embarrassed.” 

“Please,” Fen’Harel retorted with a tooth grin, as though putting back on a well-loved jacket. He was back in control. “You love it when I embarrass your brother.”

She grinned as though caught, put a hand to her chest in mock outrage and then purred, “you know I do.” 

“Well Sweet Sylaise, you have claimed to know what I have planned.” Fen’Harel spread his arms a little and took a single step forward. His finger hovered in the air as though to emphasize the point, “but it is curious you haven’t tried to stop me, or told the Family of my plans?” His nose wrinkling as he spoke. 

Sylaise smiled to herself, looking almost sorrowful, “believe me when I say every other option was worse.” 

Fen’Harel had nothing to say for a moment, looking a little uncertain as though there was some seriousness behind the Game they were playing. Solemnly he asked, “truly?”

“Yes.” She nodded bleakly. 

He swallowed and countered with a question that was meekly asked, “did Andruil have anything to say?” 

“She thinks it’s funny,” Sylaise nodded, giving him a disdainful look and casting her eyes towards the roof of her temple, dramatically as though the show was back on. “She mentioned that you might have had some kind of mental break. If my dear sister had stopped laughing, for even a single moment, I might have thought she was actually concerned for you.” Then Sylaise sat forward quite suddenly, ash flying from her pipe her golden eyes fixing on Iseshena, “and you, what’s your name? What do you think about all of this?”

Alarmed at being drawn into the conversation, when she had been quite happy not being involved, she offered, “Iseshena, my name is Iseshena.”

“Fire-born?” Sylaise repeated, with a delicious smirk carved into her features, she took another deep inhale of her pipe and breathed out, “well I don’t hate that.” She slunk forward, head propped on her hand, “where did he find you?”

“I was working-” 

“Yes I know,” Sylaise interrupted, “it was a rhetorical question. If I require an answer you shall know. I know why you’re here of course, you want a binding.” She cracked her fingers together, and stretched her arms over head. “It’s a lot of work and I don’t think I can be bothered.” 

“Sylaise-” Fen’Harel demanded. 

She didn’t look at him, flicked her hand at him in a sort of dismissive gesture. “Well Iseshena, I’ll do it for an answer. And do speak up, call it a curiosity. Do you like him, at the very least?” Sylaise tilted her head towards Fen’Harel as thought she thought Iseshena was stupid and might have misinterpreted who the question was about. 

“Well, um, I.” Iseshena stumbled over her words. 

Sylaise looked at Fen’Harel as though her gaze might set him on fire, drolling she muttered, “you couldn’t get one that lied better than that?” She stood, her sheer gown pooling at her feet like a waterfall, “I am not in the habit of binding people who do not want to be bound.” 

“What you’ve seen,” Fen’Harel said, words calm and deadly, “the thing that is worse than what I’m planning, think on that. You said that Iseshena would help me to complete my project. The one that you haven’t told anyone about, either. You want what I’m planning.”

Sylaise stared at him, all the good humour and frivolity drained from her face. “You’re asking me to sign my own death warrant.” 

Carefully he nodded, “I am.” 

She raised a pointed finger to his face, “you owe me, big, for allowing this.” The goddess didn’t wait for his response, twisting to Iseshena and pulling a small silk pouch from the bust of her dress. She pressed it to Iseshena’s hand, and winked, “you want out of this binding for whatever the reason, no questions asked. You call me.”

“Call you?” Iseshena repeated, taking the offered gift.

Sylaise brushed the back her fingers against Iseshena’s cheek, “burn the herbs,  _ Hetaera.”  _

So Iseshena found herself in another side room with Fen’Harel, this time waiting to be bound to him. She snuck a glance at him, trying to piece together what his plan might be, what had scared Sylaise so much into acquiescing to his demands. 

For his part, Fen’Harel sat next to her, hunched over, his hands hanging limp between his legs. He looked rather defeated.

“What,” she paused, looking at her own hands in her lap.

“Please, do not be afraid to ask, whatever it is,” he offered to her. Giving her a look like a man condemned to the gallows. “I cannot offer you much, but I can perhaps give you some truth.”

Iseshena licked her lower lip, she wanted to ask what he and Anaris were planning and despite his reassurances, she settled on a safer question, “what does _ Hetaera _ mean?”

Fen’Harel looked guilty as sin, “it is an unflattering old term for a ‘companion.’ It hasn’t been in use since Ghilan’nain ascended.” 

“Right.” Iseshena grimaced, disliking the unspoken connection to Ghilan’nain. She sat back on the stone bench to rest her head against the cool stone brick. She felt disgusting, there were still coal stains on her leggings and the humidity was dripping down her back. And her head was pounding as she tried to untangle all of these threads. 

“I cannot give you a greater title.” He offered grimly not looking at her. “Do you understand that you won’t be an Evanuris after this, I do not have an Orb with which to raise you like Andruil raised Ghilan’nain, Falon’Din raised Dirthamen, Mythal raised Elgar’nan.”

“That wasn’t why I asked, I don’t want to be an Evanuris.” Iseshena muttered, her fingers encircled her wrist where the binding would go.

Fen’Harel made a small sound in the back of his throat as though he didn’t believe her. 

“I just hadn’t heard the term before.”

He reached forward then, slowly, carefully, and pushed a stray curl behind her ear. As he drew back he offered, “it’s rarely used. It’s been centuries since any of them bound ‘for love.’”

The touch of his fingertips over the shell of her pointed ear had her heart in her throat, an unexpected heat rising in the pit of her belly. She fixed him with a look.

But he didn’t meet her eyes, and he could only give her an uncertain nod before he retreated away from her. 

“Give me your hands,” Sylaise commanded, holding a red woven rope in her hands. She worried the string, but tied it first around Fen’Harel’s wrist. 

Iseshena’s arm began to hurt from holding it out, she jumped a little when the cool rope touched her wrist, she bit her lip, closed her eyes and pointedly kept her wrist up in the air. She felt the thread wrap twice and twice again over her pulse. 

“I won’t dishonour either of you with the right words.” Sylaise said with a flick of her wrist and the ties that bound them together sparked into flame. Though complicated spellwork, she solidified the simple thread into a solid bangle, as vivid as bloodstone. “It’s done, until first the binding shatters or a year is completed, you are tied together.” 

Iseshena thought it was over, not quite able to regret what she’d done. She clutched her wrist to her chest. For a binding it hurt less than  _ vallaslin,  _ in fact, strangely it didn’t hurt at all. 

The soot-stained ruins of the Golden City did not look so oppressive when they arrived back that evening. Though the night had fallen, the sky was cloudless, the stars were bright. The wind rattled through the ruins, hissing through broken windows and along deserted streets. But after the oppressive heat of Sylaise’s City, it was a blessing. 

With a yawn, Iseshena realised that she had no idea where she was meant to be staying or even where she’d get a change of clothes from. All of her belongings were still in the shared dormitories where June had housed the Architects. She was going to ask, but then her voice betrayed her with a different question, “why did you destroy the City?” 

Fen’Harel’s shoulders drew up, like his hackles were raised, “because I could.” 

“Ominous,” Iseshena muttered before staring at his annoyed expression, “oh, what I meant to say was, if you want to rebuild, I can draw up some plans. It would be nice,” she stopped to look out over the sprawling empty ruins, “good to have a project.” 

“Who said I want to rebuild?” 

She turned back around, crossing an arm over her chest, “you don’t fool me. It wasn’t enough to just take the City, you’ve kept it. But what is the point of hoarding this place if you’re not going to do anything with it?”

“Iseshena,” he racked a hand over his scalp, “you are free from that, you do not have to be anything you do not wish. I did not bring you here to make you work for me.” 

“Didn’t you hear me? I just offered.” She let out an annoyed breath, “do you know how many Architects Mythal has? Had?” 

“No.” Fen’Harel replied a little curtly. 

“There were four of us. June has six thousand odd. I’m an Architect because I’m good at it, because I’ve earnt it. And,” she poked him in the chest and stuck out her chin defiantly, “you can’t take that away from me.” 

“If that is what you want.” He relented.

“Anyway, didn’t Sylaise say that I would help you? So I should - oh? Thank you.” She beamed as she realised he’d agreed. Then a little sheepish continued, “I’m going to need some paper.” 

Fen’Harel sighed, the red bracelet on his wrist caught against his side and he glared at it. “Perhaps it can wait until the morning?”

“Right, of course.” She felt unsure, she still hadn’t seen anyone else as they’d been walking, glancing around as though looking for some sign of other habitation. “So where is everyone else?”

Reluctantly, he confessed, “it is just me.”

“Just us?” Iseshena repeated back. 

“Yes.” 

  
  
  



	3. An Adapt Distraction

From the little scratch marks Iseshena had counted off the days on the corner of her papers, it had been a month since she had arrived at the ruined Golden City. For the most part, she had been spending her mornings making surveys of the City and the afternoons putting her findings to paper and making detailed notes of what she would reconstruct and what she would change. 

In all that time, she’d barely seen Fen’Harel. Rarely, they had passed in the corridors of Elgar’nan’s abandoned palace, sometimes she waved to him as she made her measurements in the morning, twice he even waved back. 

She had seen Anaris more often, who appeared to be keeping a track of Iseshena’s wellbeing or spying on her. Iseshena wasn’t sure, but didn’t really care. Anaris stopped by most days at noon to chat, it started formally. Passing on information that Iseshena needed to know, but had developed into a real friendship. 

Anaris, Iseshena learned, was a god in her own right. Something very different from the Evauris’ family, she didn’t have their golden eyes for a start. Instead Anaris had claimed her territory before Mythal had even risen from the Seas. As Mythal wielded justice, Anaris wielded wisdom gleaned from before the continent had settled into its current form, endlessly shifting shape to suit mood and whim, utterly more spirit than flesh. 

So at noon that day, when someone knocked on her door, it was Anaris that Iseshena was expecting. She took the moment to put down her drawing coal and raise her arms above her head, stretching out her fingers back as she did so. “Just give me a moment, I’ll put some tea on.”

“That will not be necessary.” Replied a stiff voice, which belonged to an even more uncomfortable looking man hanging in her doorway looking like an interloper. Fen’Harel had never come to her rooms before, it seemed as though he was trying not to indulge his curiosity at what he had found. “Forgive me, I was wondering if I may take a moment of your time?” 

“Of course,” Iseshena offered, before realising that every line across his body was tight with worry, her voice low, she asked, “what’s wrong?” 

“June.” Fen’Harel replied in a clipped tone, practically spitting the word in disgust. His eyes dark as obsidian and raging like a storm off the Amaranthine Coast.

“Right,” Iseshena returned, twisting back in her chair to quickly tidy her papers away, before standing up. Tucking her chair under her desk and leaning back against it. Whatever it was going to be bad, if he was so worried. “And what has June done?” 

It took him a moment to even find the words to express the horrors of June’s action. Fen’Harel’s gaze racked over her, absorbing every detail, “he has organised a ball in your honour.”

“What a cad.” Iseshena drawled in a tone that she’d stolen from Anaris.

Then he blinked, “you’ve been spending too much time with Anaris. This is serious, Iseshena.” Fen’Harel told her sharply. He shook his head, “the whole Family will be there.” 

Iseshena saw him fiddle with the red bracelet on his wrist, the only mark of their binding. She raised an eyebrow, already running through her mental list of everything she knew about the Evanuris and everything that Anaris had told her. She would stick out like a halla with a broken antler, putting the pieces that she had together to form a picture, softly she asked, “and you think I’ll embarrass you?”

“No,” Fen’Harel returned with a little more force than was strictly necessary. He took a step into her room, seemed to think better of it and retreated back underneath the doorframe. The whole effect was deeply unsettling. “Of course not, rather I fear that June is throwing the party now because he is confident.”

Iseshena closed her eyes, drew up her fingertips to rub away some of the exertion of the day, making an educated guess, “because he has made headway with the red lyrium research?” 

Fen’Harel nodded, a grim smile across his features. “Precisely.” 

“And,” she paused, wetting her lip. “You want me to tell you where the Architect rooms are so you can see what he’s been up to?” 

He was still looking at her mouth, when he said slowly, “I would not ask-”

“Ask.” She interrupted, “I’ll happily do it, if for no other reason than I want to know myself.” She leant back against her desk. “So, if I am walking into the fire pit is there anything I should know about the other Evanuris?”

June’s throne room was quite unlike the last time Iseshena had been there. Every inch of space along the walls was covered in magelights, which reflected the bronze tiles in the floor making the ballroom appear as though it was made of liquid metal. One wrong move and the whole thing would dissolve underfoot.

Iseshena saw the reflection of the woman before she saw her, Sylaise, striding towards them before she saw the goddess. She was about to bow, but felt a hand on her upper back, fist scrunched in her dress keeping her upright. Caught off guard, Iseshena looked up and realised that it was not the goddess of the Hearth, but rather her inimical sister. 

_ Andruil. _

She was tall, easily matching Fen’Harel’s height and towering over Iseshena. Her lips were painted crimson, a fleck of which had rubbed off onto her teeth. In hindsight it seemed like a warning that her canines were as sharp as they were bloody and she wasted no time going straight for his jugular. 

And with one hand on Iseshena’s back and the other holding a wine glass, he couldn’t even defend himself. 

“Ah, look! The puppy that never realised he was abandoned in the woods for a reason, what have you dragged in?” She ran her hand down Fen’Harel’s arm, finding the binding bracelet and holding it up, “how quaint.”

Which might have had more venom if she hadn’t been wearing a binding bracelet of her own, tying her to Ghilan’nain, Iseshena thought.

Fen’Harel’s grip on Iseshena tightened to steer her away, but Iseshena was unsure if he was trying to protect her or himself from the Family’s warrior. She schooled herself not to fear this goddess,  _ “ma Evanuris, _ Andruil, I am-”

“Yes, I know what you are.” The golden eyed woman snapped, before she sniffed at the air, “you smell like sadness and wet dog.” 

“Right,” Iseshena swallowed, deciding not to tell the goddess that her lipstick had smudged. 

Andruil caught Fen’Harel’s jaw between her thumb and forefinger, stepping forward to press herself against him, “if you get bored of your pathetic distraction, do let me know. If you ask nicely, I’ll invite Ghil again.” She lent forward to lick a stripe against his cheek, pulling back to flash Iseshena a challenging look before she sauntered off. 

Fen’Harel was frozen, still clutching Iseshena’s dress, his hand vibrating with fury against her back. 

“Are you okay?” Iseshena asked, turning to him and looking up with concern.

Blinking, Fen’Harel looked past her, jerkily he shook his head. Using the back of his hand to wipe Andruil’s spit from his cheek. His voice was as brittle as broken glass. “You shouldn’t have had to see that.” 

Iseshena glanced around to see a few eyes on them, Falon’Din and Daern’thal were smirking together, while Dirthamen looked grave beside them. Ghilan’nain was sneaking glances at them when Andruil wasn’t watching her. “Do you want some air?” She asked a little too loudly, for the benefit of those watching. 

He nodded stiffly, but rather than find their way to a balcony, Iseshena ducked them inside the first alcove they stumbled across. All the better and all the quicker to get out of that toxic room with too many eyes watching them. 

“Are you alright?” She repeated, watching him unreveal. “I heard what she did to you,” Iseshena offered, knowing better to recount the occasion Andruil had tied him to a tree and used him for target practise. He had escaped, that much was clear - but Iseshena didn’t know how. Regardless, she told him, “Andruil has no power over you now. Solas, do you hear me?” 

The sound of his name in that claustrophobic space caused him to look up, shocking him enough to bring him back to the present. His dark blue eyes searching her face for something, the subterfuge, the lie. But he couldn’t find it. “What did you call me?” 

“Your name,” she murmured back. Then she faltered, flustered that she’d potentially misremembered, “that is your name, isn’t it?” 

He let his gaze linger upon the lips that had spoken his name and nodded, under furrowed eyebrows. Fen'Harel breathed a little heavily as he answered her. “No one calls me by that name.” 

“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have.” Iseshena felt the heat rising in her cheeks and she shifted away from him, pushing a stray curl back from her face. 

“I like it.” 

Iseshena looked up at him, through her lashes. A long look that felt important, world changing, shattering and rebuilding in a way she couldn’t really describe in words. So, she broke from his gaze, feeling self conscious and realised the corridor they were standing in. 

“Solas,” she whispered, trying out his name, enjoying the feel of it in her mouth, “I think I know where we are.” 

“Where do you think we are?” He repeated back to her, shaping her words into that of a question. Fen’Harel felt unsettled in a way that was not familiar, he hadn’t used his name for centuries now, didn’t quite know why he’d given it to her. But, it felt honest. And after hearing it, he never wanted her to stop saying it. 

Iseshena however, was distracted, pointing down the dark corridor, “the red lyrium, the Architects’ rooms, they’re down there. Somewhere, down there.” 

Leading the way down the dimly lit corridors, Iseshena felt his presence behind her. Like static electricity. 

She knew exactly where he was.

Iseshena did not, as it turned out, know where she was. 

“I think I’ve taken a wrong turning.” She complained after they’d taken the same loop at least twice. But, even as she said that she spotted a sliver of a red glow from underneath a closed doorway. “Or maybe not?” The doorway had an observation window, which she stretched onto her toes to peer through, “statues?” 

Fen’Harel pressed behind her to look over her shoulder, tall enough that he had no need to stretch to see into the gloom. 

Through the little window, Iseshena could pick out a handful of them, beautifully carved red lyrium elves. “I don’t think it’s a weapon.” She said, pressing her fingers into the sill to balance. “They’re a bit macabre, but they’re pretty.” She commented, as Fen’Harel cast a magelight to get a betterlook. 

The artist had designed spikes of the material sticking out in shards from the statues’ bodies and it seemed they had been enchanted with a red mist over the eyes. The light illuminated them, and one of them turned to look at the trespassers. 

“Oh gods.” Iseshena spat, flinching back so fast she elbowed into Fen’Harel and hit the wall on the other side of the corridor. She had staggered back as though she’d been stabbed, her stomach tightening with a jolt and she clapped her hands across her face. The red lyrium statue was Nassa, a nice Architect boy from Falon’Din’s city who Iseshena remembered had gotten tongue-tied talking to on their induction day. 

“They did this.” Solas told her firmly, his words harsh as flint upon stone striking her into sparks. He didn’t have it in him to be disgusted by what June had done, in all honesty he’d feared worse. 

Iseshena reached for him, and he let her pull him down by the shoulders. Her hands resting on his collarbones as she hung her head. Her words took on an edge of panic that he misliked, “that could have be me in there, if you hadn’t-”

“I will not let that happen.” He swore to her, taking her hands in his. 

“It shouldn’t happen to anyone,” Iseshena spat, looking up with a passion and fury he had not expected to find in her everite eyes. “We have to stop this.” 

It was then, he felt himself come undone a little at the seams. He was going to tell her the truth, tell her of his plans. “I swear to you, Iseshena, that is my intention.” 

“Who’s there?” A voice echoed through the hallway.

“Come on.” Fen’Harel hissed. “We have to leave.”

“We can’t outrun them.” Iseshena gasped, clutching her side as a stitch began to form and the light chasing them burned brighter. Fen’Harel had longer legs than her and she’d begun trailing, started lagging and was now physically unable to keep up. She felt like crying or screaming, but what she said was. “We’re lost, hopelessly.” 

Fen’Harel growled at the delay, deciding that he’d carry her if he had to. “Don’t stop.” He urged, his pulse in his throat.

“Wait, we need to think smarter.” She breathed, tapping herself on the forehead as though that would encourage her brain to work. She clicked at him, her fingers moving in a burst of energy, “give me your shirt.”

“What?”

She didn’t wait for him, shrugging the thin strap of her dress off her shoulder and pulling out the ties that kept her hair up. 

He could only watch at her dark curls settled around her face, with amused curiosity at her plans, only drawn back to their present predicament as she thrust her hand back out again. 

“Give me your shirt, now.” 

Fen’Harel shook his head, glanced towards the approaching light, “please tell me you have a plan. A good one.” 

_ They were trapped here now.  _

“Trust me.” Iseshena breathed. 

He pulled his shirt off, revealing a rather fine chest. 

Iseshena stared at him for a heartbeat, her mouth going dry. Then she grabbed his offered shirt and threw it back down the way they’d come, the fabric spilt in a puddle across the floor, before she pulled the side of her gown up past her knee.

“You’d better have a dagger up there.” He snapped impatient, and on edge, eyes darting to the growing light.

“Give me your hand.” She commanded, reaching out to take his hand when he did not do as bid. 

His hand was hot, and she pulled him towards her and hooked his palm against her bare thigh, and the sensation was enough to make her gasp, enough to make him groan. His eyes found hers as he realised exactly what she had planned.

With her hand free, she tugged at his shoulders and backed them both into a wall. “Well, husband, will you kiss me?” 

“Oh June’s Grace,” his High Priestess muttered, disgusted, as she turned the corner to find Fen’Harel with his tongue in his  _ Hetaera’s _ mouth. Even from ten paces she could hear the wet sound of their kissing. 

It seemed that Sylaise had not been as mistaken as the Family had thought in allowing their binding. As Fen’Harel’s hand was pawing at her arse, dragging her body closer against him before pressing them both into the wall. If she left them there, they’d rut like animals on the fine carpets. So the Priestess loudly cleared her throat.

The  _ Hetaera _ noticed and had the manners to break away, wide eyes drawn to the Priestess, shock and panic across her face at being discovered. But he, Fen’Harel, pulled her back to press his lips against hers again and she melted against him, moaning a collection of breathy noises all while clawing at his exposed shoulders. 

Aveuna, the High Priestess, considered her calling to June for all of a heartbeat. She felt she put up with a lot, after seeing this display she was minded to ask for a raise. Loudly, she smacked her hands together, “break it up! Now.” 

Fen’Harel pulled back from his  _ Hetaera, _ pressing his forehead against hers for a moment, before he turned his dark gaze upon Aveuna. His lips pulling back into a snarl. He didn’t scare her, she was quite sure the power of June would protect her from these interlopers in the presence of the Family. 

“You set off six alarms,” she snapped at them, bringing forth the full fury and heat of June’s forges. “What are you doing down here?” 

It was the  _ Hetaera _ who spoke, stepping forward to lightly touch Fen’Harel’s arm, to call her Wolf off. “Forgive me. I thought I knew the layout of this place.” She pressed her hand against her mouth, “could you tell us the way to the Guest Suits, please?” 

Aveuna closed her eyes, she was going to ask June for a pay rise, she decided, first thing in the morning. When she opened them, Fen’Harel had picked up his shirt and was smoothing out the fabric. The High Priestess of June gave them both a begrudging smile. “I won’t tell him of your indiscrecion, this way.” 

“Thank you,” the  _ Hetaera _ whispered, with a small smile to show her gratitude. “We really appreciate it. Don’t we?”

The Dread Wolf made a non-committal sound in the back of his throat. 

Once the door of the Guest Rooms were closed, Iseshena pressed her ear against the door, waiting until the Priestess of June’s footsteps had receded. Then, she took a breath and turned to Solas, “I’m sorry,” she blurted out, “about all of it - I shouldn’t have kissed you like that, I’m so sorry.” 

Solas looked at her, at her unease, “that was quick thinking,” he congratulated, trying to keep the edge of bitterness from his voice and failing miserably. 

She smiled faintly, she glanced down before meeting his gaze again, “and very good acting, I rather liked how quickly you got into character.” 

“Do not forget, Iseshena, that this is not real.” He reminded her quietly. 

For a second she froze, before the smile dripped off her face, only to be replaced by a carefully crafted neutral expression. “Of course not, I haven’t forgotten.” She agreed, before readjusting the strap again on her shoulder, she pressed a hand to her hair, but she left it half-loose. “Would you like me to write to Anaris of what we found tonight?”

“No, I will do it.” 

“Right. I should get to bed.” She took a step, wobbled and looked back at him, “I know it’s none of my business, but,” she breathed out, “are you sleeping with Andruil?” 

“It is none of your business.” He told her coldy, but then he reconsidered, “what I mean to say is that sometimes it benefits me for her to underestimate me, for her to think that I am weak-willed and easily manipulated. She takes the victory for what it is and doesn’t look deeper, you have to understand that Andruil has never been strategically minded.” 

“That’s a pretty way of saying ‘yes,’” Iseshena remarked, matching him in icy tone, then she thawed, “I just meant, you didn’t look happy around her, I just thought, perhaps you shouldn’t do something that makes you so unhappy.” 

“Leave me,” he muttered, swishing a hand in her direction as a dismissal.

Iseshena looked like she was going to argue, even going so far as to open her mouth in protest. But she shut it, and left in a swirl of skirts. 

Solas didn’t watch her leave, he needed to focus on the red lyrium issue, he could not afford to be distracted by a jealous woman that tasted like apricots and moaned his name. He chuckled, a woman jealous over him? What a strange concept. It was either that or Iseshena actually cared about him and his happiness, which was even more preposterous. He glanced at the doorway through which she’d fled, feeling a sharp sting of guilt that he quickly buried. 

  
  
  



	4. Recorded in Pigment

Solas hadn’t been avoiding Iseshena, but he hadn’t sought out her company either. He had avoided her since the night of the party, and had repeatedly told himself that he couldn’t allow himself to be distracted at such an important moment, until he almost believed it. His preparations for sundering reality as they knew it, were almost complete. 

_ Time was well and truly running out.  _

He had been making one such final preparation when he spotted her, it seemed like she had been standing there in his doorway for a while. Her hand raised, but unmoved and she looked unsure if she should knock or not. 

Solas had been pouring over his maps of Elvhenan, each marked with hundreds of tokens littering the inked stratigraphic ripples. Each mark represented where one of his agents had placed one of the activation devices. Together the devices would create a net that would cover the continent and split reality in two. When he say her, he realised that there was not enough time to hide his plans only to act as though nothing at all was amiss.

With a final glance at his maps, Solas folded his fingers together on top of them. “Iseshena?”

“It’s done.” She breathed almost giddy, tightening her arms around a bundle of her own blueprints that she was grasping to her. Iseshena’s hair was tied up at the crown of her hair and she’d clearly some so quickly that she’d forgotten that she had left a stick of drawing coal behind her ear. 

“What is done?” 

It seemed she was waiting for him to say that, because with a fugitive look, she moved over, spilling her plans on top of his. “The Golden City,” she breathed, words spilling out of her sure and fast. “I finished mapping it two weeks back, and I think I’ve come to an acceptable design, but I wondered-?” She broke off from her excited deluge to pass him a glance. “Would you mind having a look, before I finalise anything? I want to make sure that you’re happy with it?”

Solas watched the way she embellished her speech with her hands, enraptured as he listened to her words, soft and sure. Realising she was waiting for his cue, he nodded once a little stiffly.

Iseshena practically glowed as she passionately explained where the Aqueducts would go, how she would go about widening the main roads into the City for increased trade, why she wanted to rebuild the sprawling mass of accommodations completely. 

Solas felt a stab of guilt as she spoke, he’d let her waste her time on this project. And even now, he didn’t want to interrupt her to tell her he had no plans to rebuild the Golden City. 

How could he tell her, that the reason why he had captured Elgar’nan’s Golden City? That he had left it in ruin and defended it mercilessly from attack was painfully simple: the City was almost smack central on the landmass, by his calculations the perfect place to let loose his cataclysm? 

Iseshena was still speaking, talking in depth about the once barren scraps of land to the west, where the City ran into a natural mountain range. She wanted to take these areas and build them into parks with sanctuaries for miniature griffons. 

Her words were so vivid that he could picture it, and he wanted it. The parks. He saw them together, hiking up into the snow-capped mountains with parcels of seeds and stale bread to feed Ghilan’nain’s little feathery cast offs. Maybe she’d be cold, so he’d give her his jacket.

“Solas?”

“Hmm?” He jerked back to the present and it seemed that she’d stopped talking some minutes ago. Her curls brushed up against his arm and he didn’t move away from her. 

Iseshena was watching him, her expression torn between careful reluctance and amusement, her body pressed close to the back of his chair as she stretched to look back over her work, “if you don’t like it-?”

She was close enough that he could just reach out for her, take her and taste her apricot kisses again. It would have been easily enough done, no morose Priestess to interrupt them. He swallowed the thought, picked a question at random. “Why did you decide on a sanctuary for miniature griffons?” 

Iseshena laughed, “they’re cute, and they have no place to go,” then she gave him a scathing look, softened by the fact it was given through her curtain of hair. “Would you prefer one in your honour?” She twisted around so she lent back on the desk and teased, “a monument to the grumpiest man I’ve ever had the pleasure of meeting? Shall I draw a Wolf with a scowl? Will that please you?” 

He scowled at her.

She smiled, “yes, just like that. Hold still, it will be a perfect likeness,” plucking the pencil from her ear and pretending to measure the sharp lines of his face. But, then she gasped, jape forgotten and peered forward rather intently at his neck, before telling him, “what happened? You’re bleeding.” 

His fingertips found a damp spot where she was looking, pulling back a carmine colour, “just paint.” 

“You paint?” Iseshena repeated back to him, drawing back to a more appropriate distance. Her mouth spread into a smirk. “And just what do you paint?”

The murals stretched over every available surface like a madness spreading out from the centre of the City. As Iseshena turned, each patch of broken wall, column and archway was painted with stylistic art. 

She’d never seen it before, the space was hidden away under the uninhabitable halls of Elgar’nan’s Palace, levelled down to a Courtyard, the only patch of the whole City where the debris of war had been cleared away and turned into a canvas. 

Painted memories on the wall, they spread out as though the one had begotten the next. Some were autobiographical, Iseshena saw the outlines of Andruil and Anaris stood with a third shadowy figure, over Fen’Harel tied to his tree, arrow in his stomach and bleeding out watercolour across plaster. 

Everywhere she looked the Family’s faces intermingled with Spirits’ and the vague brushstrokes of people that had Solas’ look about them, his real family perhaps? Nameless shades and shapes that cropped up in edges of the murals.

As they spiralled out, Iseshena brushed her fingers against them. She soaked them in, questions bubbling silently and waiting on her tongue - most of the murals were not depictions of stories that Iseshena knew. But she wished she did. She wanted to know what each of them meant, how each piece fit together. 

“They’re beautiful.” Iseshena whispered, feeling a little like she had stepped into a kaleidoscopic dream. Shifting, floating colours, rich and dripping across every inch of free space. 

“I paint to remember.” Fen’Harel told an outline of a faceless Elgar’nan that he’d never gotten around to finishing, and probably never would. He watched Iseshena’s gaze drifting over the images like he wanted her fingers to drag across him. He cleared his throat, stepping back out of her sight, “the stories are already becoming corrupt with the retelling, here they can remain, unadulterated.” 

She turned to look at him, not letting him retreat from her attentions. Her lips parted as she found her question, “you were painting something red? You had it on your neck.” 

“That one is not ready.” He dismissed, with a flick of his fingers, like a warding gesture to keep her from discovering his secrets.

Except it only made Iseshena want to find out what he was hiding more, she stepped up to him, a glance though her lashes that made him want to sit down. “I’m curious.” 

“I know,” his expression grim, but his tone light, “that’s the most dangerous thing about you.” But his body betrayed him as he looked through the arch to the painting he was trying to keep hidden. In all honesty, he had been mostly finished for weeks, but he kept finding new reasons to work on that particular piece. 

Iseshena followed his gaze and froze. “You didn’t...” her breath was hitched, her ribs tight and she stepped forward before he could stop her. Ducking under a fallen column to come face to face with herself.

Her painted counterpart stood, at least twice as tall as she was, oval face framed by dark brown curls, warm everite brown eyes staring forwards just over her shoulder, full lips just parted with a question on her lips. Her own painted hand stretched out to her, as though to say, ‘come with me.’ 

The binding bracelet was almost hidden, but there, bold and crimson against her skin. Red. That was what he had been working on. 

“Don’t touch it, it will still be wet,” Fen’Harel warned her, his voice tight, as she reached to her stylised mirror image. 

“You painted me?” She asked in spite of herself, asking in spite of the evidence in front of her. 

“It was an event that needed recording,” he offered simply, but shifted under her look and focused his attention on the unmoving portrait. With the object of his study close, he could see each and every one of his mistakes made in the copying. The result of his stubbornness, he’d kept away from her and the portrait was not perfect. 

He could only just admit to himself that he was rather fond of the painting, it was the Iseshena that could only tempt in a distant sort of way. But not love, not reach for him and drag him into the depths of her everite eyes. 

Iseshena wasn’t quite sure what to say, what the correct protocol was for this sort of thing. “Thank you. It’s very sweet of you.” She whispered, drawing him to her, like a moth to flame.

“I don’t think anyone has ever accused me of being sweet before,” he muttered in reply as though to deflect her. 

Iseshena did not reach for him like the vivid image of her that he has conjured and cast up upon the wall. She was not there to guide him, nor mislead, only to rock onto her toes and press a kiss to his cheek. 

Solas didn’t react, surprised and so utterly caught off guard. 

In every imagining of this moment, he had predicted it ending poorly. That Iseshena might be offended that he had taken so much from her, but now her likeness also. Or he had expected a chastisement for the way that it was impossible to catch the way that her lip curled just slightly when she was amused, the gentle taper of her ears, the curve of her neck. That his dull copy, was just that, a dull copy that could never hope to compete.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, shame-faced and pulling back when he did not respond. Unsettled and unsure. Casting her gaze around the room a frown settled deep into her expression. “Is it because of Andruil?” 

That caused him to look up in alarm and he almost laughed, but stumbling across his words he tried to explain, “no, that. No. Iseshena, it’s been decades since, well. Andruil. No.” Words coming out far too fast to make actual sense. He wanted to give her the truth that was difficult to find, everytime he came close it ran through his fingers like sand. His attempt was clumsy and unrehearsed. “Forgive me, I have no wish to take advantage of you, not now. This is a place in which you did not choose to be.” 

“Because it isn’t real?” She nodded solemnly, looking down at the binding bracelet on her wrist. 

“Yes.” 

Iseshena moved it, the offending article, twisted it over her wrist. Even considered snapping the damn thing off, tossing it across the room and trying to kiss him again. This time with nothing binding her to him, to cut through the imagined boundaries. 

Faultingly, she told him her truth, “you warned me, and yet I keep forgetting,” she smiled sadly, but didn’t look at him. Dropping her hands to her side, she drew her confidence to her and took a little step towards him. “What if I wanted it to be real, Solas?” 

“Wishing would not make it so, even if I wanted it as well.” He replied, but equally encroached upon her space. His words lapping at her like the cold waters of a frozen ocean, and depth and darkness there that she could let herself be taken under. 

“And do you?” She asked, blinking up through her lashes, so close that if he just dropped his head. “Want it to be real?”

“How could I not?” He said wretchedly, pressing his forehead to hers. “But, I cannot shake the thought that I am putting words into your mouth, that I am forcing you to act. Understand that I must not let my pride become arrogance.” 

The rejection was as clear and bright as the midday sun and Iseshena knew better than to push. “I understand.” She told him, backing up and retreating. Already planning that she would try harder to keep out of his way for the rest of her allotted time here. 

With a last, long look at the mural that he had painted of her, a thought struck her, one that she had almost forgotten. She was by that point most of the way across the mural laden courtyard. She paused by a pillar and put her hand on it. 

The broken pillar had once been a doorway, and now she was stranded in the liminal space. “Solas,” Iseshena said, clinging to the stone as though it might ground her, “before I forget, your map? Have you accounted for altitude variation?” 

The question was as strange as her confession had been and he couldn’t make sense of it. “What?” 

“On your desk? The map of Elvhenan? With the markers. If you’re trying to create a net where each point is equidistant and you put one on top of a mountain and one in a valley, the measurements are going to be off. There will be weak points.”

He hadn’t considered it. 

It hurt more than it should have done to realise the blatant error, he formed that pain like a lump of raw clay and forged it into a biting comment. “You got all of that from one look?”

“I did warn you I was good at what I do.” She retorted in the same tone, her arm back across her chest, as though she could shield herself from his words. 

Fen’Harel sighed, his impulsiveness did him no credit. “You did.” He acknowledged, profoundly. 

“Goodbye then.” 

His resolve crumbled into a pitiful pile of rubble on the floor, he stepped over it as he rushed towards her. “Iseshena, wait.” 

And she waited, the strange and curious woman, rooted to the spot. 

“I lied to you.” He told her desperately, the weight of his crushing up on his chest. Like the pressure on the seafloor. He was quite sure he should not share the burden, not let her become trampled under his ambition. But he couldn’t stop himself.

The look she gave him was full of disappointment, cold and distance judgement. An echo of Mythal. “How did you lie to me?” Her eyes drifted to a mural of Andruil that he had painted without a face. 

“I do have an Orb.” He confessed, “it’s called the Orb of Destruction. And it is appropriately named, I’m going to use it to tear Elvhenan apart. I can’t kill the Family, but I can dethrone them.” 

She stared at him. Her arm fell limp to her side. Carefully, she crafted her response; 

“Right.”

“That’s all you have to say?” He snapped, feeling spiteful. Disappointed that that was all the response she should muster. He’d never really felt like the ‘Dread Wolf,’ the terror in the night, but in that moment he wanted to. When he’d told Anaris of his plans, she’d agreed to help him, even going so far as to willingly sacrifice herself in the process. 

But, Iseshena. She was different. There was a strange impulse within him, perhaps he realised the reason why he had been hiding from her. He wanted her to fight him, scream and fight and not let her world die so easily. Call him the monster that he felt, that his quest for revenge had gone too far. 

She raised an eyebrow, questioning. “If I ask you not to, will you stop?”

“No.” 

“Then I have nothing more to say.” Iseshena shrugged, she looked past him, her shoulders squared. Hardly ready for a fight, but to defend her position if needs be. 

That hurt. More than it should have. 

“How long do we have?” Iseshena brushed a stray curl from her face, not looking at him.

“A couple of days.”

A flicker of fear passed across her features, like a cloud passing in front of the sun. Only a shadow and gone as quickly as it had appeared. “Right.” 

“How can you be fine with this?” He demanded.

Iseshena gave him a withering look, “I have done well enough with the opportunities afforded to me under the Evanuris, but, not everyone has. They’re corrupt and you know it.” 

“I do.” 

“So we’re in agreement?” Iseshena muttered. “They should be stopped, if you plan to do something about them. And there is nothing more to say.”

“There is, something else. Iseshena, if all goes well, I will fall into Uthenera and not wake up. I am taking myself out of the picture as well. I am sorry, I never wanted you involved in this. In a few days the Family is coming here and it will be suspicious if you are not there as well.” 

Iseshena closed her eyes then, a breath escaping her, her cheek resting against the broken archway. “Are you asking me to die for you?” 

“I’m asking you, if you will join me… in righting the wrongs of this sorry place, in imprisoning the so called gods and freeing the People and,” he broke off suddenly, the line in his neck going tight.

“Do you really believe that?” She interrupted.

“Yes.” 

“But, what are you really asking?” 

“I’m asking,” Solas started, feeling so utterly unsure. Nothing had gone to plan and yet everything made sense. He found his voice to try a new question. “Will you join me in  _ Utherena?”  _

“You want me to dream with you?” Iseshena snapped to look at him. 

“Yes.”

She rubbed at her eyes. “You have reality all wrong,” she cursed under her breath to the man that couldn’t bring himself to touch her for the binding on their arms, but thought they could be free in dreams? “I need to think about this, it’s a lot.” 

“I’m sorry.” Fen’Harel seemed to collapse in on himself. To realise what he had put upon her, to see himself on a different path from the one he had expected when they’d walked into the mural courtyard. 

“Don’t be sorry.” She breathed, her hands already up and backing away. “Just give me some time.” She needed space, needed time, needed far more than a few sodding days. 

When she had left him, he let his anger overtake him, blasting a column with June painted upon it, lopping the gods head clean off and throwing another bolt of mana at it until the face was unrecognisable. That had gone about as well as he could have suspected, he told himself cruelly, who could want him once they knew the truth? 

He sunk down wearily in front of the painting of Iseshena, her warm brown eyes watching him unblinking. And he told the false her, the real truth, “I think I love you.”

  
  
  



	5. Freeing the Griffons

Iseshena stood far back, as far away as she could from the three chairs, in the Black City surrounded by the burnt out ruins of what had gone before. In the epicentre of what was to come.

The room didn’t feel right. There were lines in the ash on the floor where crumbling chairs had been dragged through the dust. Two of the windows of the hall had been broken through and never repaired, whistling everytime the wind blew and a chill that brought with it the sorry familiar scent of delay. 

It was like the oppressive walls knew what they were witnessing and disapproved. They was watching, like Iseshena was watching, stood on the outskirts of the most important meeting Elvhenan had ever seen. That was currently taking place over the charred surface of Elgar’nan’s great state table, his war table repurposed. 

Anaris and Sylaise sat on one side, Fen’Harel on the other. 

To the table, Sylaise had brought the red lyrium designs, stolen from under her brother June’s nose. It was a pile of paperwork that stated in complex language and technical jargon that the Architects had finished their work, before becoming the first ‘test subjects.’ Reduced to victims of their own success, the dispassionate medical reports recorded the horror inflicted upon the Architects.

The fate that Iseshena had so narrowly avoided. 

“It spreads by touch,” Sylaise explained, as she threw the heavy dossier onto the table, “first you are infected with red lyrium, it kills you and consumes you. You become red lyrium.” 

“A weapon that grows more weapons?” Anaris spat, pulling the documents to her and leafing through the pages. Her face, hardened with disgust. “Exponential growth. If left unchecked it could consume a City in a matter of weeks.”

“Days,” Sylaise corrected, her face turned away as though she didn’t quite have the stomach for this discussion. She had a small pipe between her fingers, and she was puffing steadily through some elfroot. “Hours if the corpses are mined for more lyrium. This is what will happen should we fail, I have seen it.” 

Fen’Harel sat back in his chair, fingers curled into grips upon the armrests. A snarl on his face that hadn’t faded, directed at the documents before him. 

“We had best not fail, then.” Anaris offered, flicking a glance towards Sylaise for confirmation on the matter, but the Goddess of Prophecy chose not to answer. “I will take this to the Spirit gods, tell them what the Family has planned. Daern’thal will demand we speak with Mythal.” 

“Ah, the news hasn’t broken yet, but Mother’s been murdered.” Sylaise noted disinterestedly as though she was commenting on the weather. “Slain in her own City.” 

“That changes things, if Mythal is not there, there is no one to appeal to for reason.” Anaris acknowledged, but then she bit her lip in worry. She bowed her head, her cropped hair spilling over her eyes. She glanced up, “we should pause until we can establish she is truly dead.”

Shaking his head, Solas gave his friend a sorrowful look, “if there’s another civil war they’ll use their newest weapons. June will not wait for a better excuse to test them out. This changes nothing.”

“Agreed.” Sylaise nodded. “If your project fails, the Violet City will be red in six days, the Blue in nine.”

Anaris inhaled sharply, “if we are going to proceed, then it will be easier to convince Geldauran to claim this power for ourselves. I can whisper in his ear, convince him we need a source of red lyrium for ourselves. Once he decides, the rest will follow.” 

“And once you have them in the Abyss,” Sylaise picked up, lips curling into a smirk, looking towards Fen’Harel, “you will throw a party for the Family. Have you decided upon the request you would like me to take to them?” 

Fen’Harel sat forward, eyes dark as obsidian. “Tell them, I have decided to return Elgar’nan’s City. Tell them that I have reconsidered, he may have it back. Make sure they all come.” 

“Will they all come?” Anaris asked Sylaise, her fingers clenched so tight upon the documents that the papers were starting to crease.

“There are ways to ensure it,” Sylaise whispered, but then her head tilted to the side as she evaluated Solas. And her expression softened, far softer than Iseshena had ever seen her, “the survivors, they’re going to call it the Veil. You’re going to hate it, Dread Wolf.”

Fen’Harel swallowed, eyes flicking away from her for a moment too long, “it seems fitting, consider where you both will be.”

The silence was so thick that it could have been cut with a knife. Uncertainty hung in the air like well made drapes. Through this, Iseshena stepped forward, a quiet nod to the goddesses and an unreadable look given in offering to Solas. She placed a rolled map onto the table by Sylaise, “plans. They are complete.” 

“If you need to convince them that I am serious,” Fen’Harel explained, gesturing a hand towards Iseshena’s map of the Golden city. Exactly as she had worked, but for one notable exception. Under the foot of the mountains to the West, where there had once been a miniature griffon sanctuary, had been reworked to a magnificent temple complex to Elgar’nan. “Show him that.” 

Sylaise’s hand drifted over the designs, nodding with each improvement. She laughed, a giggle that felt utterly out of place in the room and she clucked her approval, “this will ensure they all come, that you mean it.”

Though in the moment, Solas traced his eyes over Iseshena. When he’d asked her to rework the map, she’d glared at him, walked away from him in utter silence. 

But she had reworked it as he wished. 

Iseshena’s work, was as careful and immaculate as ever, ink lines so beautiful that Solas thought it was a sacrilege to give them to Elgar’nan. Even now she stood a little apart, her hands together in front of her, her face bowed to the ground. Sorrow strewn and hurt, he wanted to go to her. 

As though reading Solas’ uncertainty, Anaris asked her, “have you made your choice?” Her voice low as a cat through the undergrowth.

“She hasn’t decided yet,” Solas told them, bitterly, speaking on her behalf. Earning him a frown from Iseshena, but she didn’t correct him. 

“I don’t like loose ends.” Anaris told the table, but aimed pointedly at Solas. 

Which resulted in the two having some conversation in gestures and pointed looks that was only possible from generations of friendship. 

“Well,” Anaris breathed as they reached an impasse, “it appears that it is show time.” She stood, her chair squeaking across the tiles, her hand reaching out to steady it to stop it from toppling. Then Anaris glanced at it, letting her fingers unfurl. The chair wobbled on its back legs, and fell to the floor, kicking up a cloud of dust. Poignant as a fallen monarch in a grand game of chess. “Sylaise, Iseshena,” she nodded a farewell, then her lips turned to a small little smile that didn’t reach her eyes, “Fen’Harel.” With the documents stolen from June in her arms, she strode from the room. 

Solas watched her go for a moment, before he closed his eyes. His oldest friend, co-conspirator. It had been for her he’d taken a body. And he always knew that she would leave, had been waiting for this moment for centuries beyond counting, but to feel it, to see it, the moment was akin to having his heart torn out of his chest with blunt fingers. 

“Don’t look so glum,” Sylaise cooed at him, as though his misery was of no consequence to her, “you’ll find Wisdom again. Sooner than you think.” Then she held up a hand to stop his question, “ah, you know I hate to spoil a perfectly good ending.” Then she turned to Iseshena, “you didn’t call me,” she said by way of greeting, “I expected you to call me after three days. I don’t like it when I am wrong, although in this instance I maybe forgive you.”

Iseshena stared at the goddess, knowing that they would never see each other again, “um, thank you. Not just for that, but for everything.” 

Her words so sincere Sylaise thought she might choke on them. She shifted uncomfortably on her own chair, a little hand wave to draw Iseshena close, “it’s true? That you still haven’t decided?”

“I, um, no, I haven’t decided.” Iseshena replied, letting herself fall into the emotion, “are you happy to be trapped behind it?” 

The goddess of the Hearth smiled, wicked wide revealing her sharp white teeth, “I have seen what will happen if I do not and I have been graciously allowed to take my Orb with me. You’ve been to my City, I do rather like carving out a space for myself in the most inhospitable environments. This shall be my greatest challenge yet. But, yours, hmm.” She laughed and ran her fingers through her thick black hair, “may I see your bracelet?”

Gingerly, Iseshena gave the goddess of the hearth her arm, Sylaise’s fingers were warm as they looked over the binding bracelet, “not a scratch on it,” she muttered before she smacked Iseshena’s wrist against the table hard.

Iseshena heard the sound before she felt it, she cried out wrenching her arm back, “why would you-?”

“It looks like the bracelet is cracked, you two should speak about that.” Sylaise stood smartly, flashing Fen’Harel a look. 

Solas was already on his feet, which Sylaise found that to be immensely funny and she let go of Iseshena, she flashed the Dread Wolf a bored look, “I suppose I’ll see you on the other side,” before she too took her leave. 

Clutching her hand to her chest, Iseshena glared after her, she hissed as she moved her wrist. Nothing broken, but it would certainly bruise. “Why did she do that?” She groaned, as Solas offered her a healing spell that would numb the discomfort. 

“It is the rules of the game, a broken binding bracelet is a broken binding. She’s offering you a way out.” He told her, as he focused utterly on wrapping the golden tendrils of magics around her wrist, knitting her injury back together, expending more mana than strictly necessary to fully heal her. 

There was little that could be done about the bracelet, Sylaise’s magic had fizzled out and the solid material returned to the rope that had bound them. The crack was now thread straying to fray. 

“Pointless, the way out, I mean.” Iseshena muttered, flexing her fingers when the healing was done. “I can’t go back to Mythal’s City knowing what I know, I can’t sit and wait, not knowing when this will happen.” 

“Right,” Solas said, in a manner and tone utterly stolen from her. 

“I thought,” she started and stopped quite suddenly, through the broken windows, she could see the orange glow of sunset painting the City. Maybe it would be her last sunset? “I was told that the binding bracelets were supposed to be representational? If the string frays, so could the relationship? So this isn’t an ending, but a choice. To be fixed or left to unravel?” 

It was a heartbeat before he spoke. He tried to retreat away from her, but caught up against the table. It was a little jarring and he tried to cover the indignity with a question, “who told you that?”

“Anaris.” 

“Of course.” Solas huffed, he felt a little sick. He’d lost Anaris and now he was going to lose Iseshena as well, Sylaise had seen to that. Perhaps that was his punishment, for what he was going to do. 

Iseshena licked her lower lip, worried that he looked quite so trapped. “What I mean to say is, Solas, I’m not the only one with a choice.” 

He looked rather wretched, “I don’t deserve-“

“Shut up,” she snapped, rubbing her eyes with her fingertips. Then she looked at him. A stray curl had fallen in front of her eyes, she pushed it out of the way with an annoyed flourish. “I’m asking what do you want?”

Solas skirted the question as aptly as he did all questions that he didn’t want to answer. He repurposed her words and gave them back to her. “What do you want?” 

She could only stare at him, in a distant sort of horror, it took all her will to not tremble. “You. Is that not clear?”

“I think I needed to hear it.” He mumbled to himself, looking at his own hands, at his own immaculate binding bracelet. 

“And?” She demanded of him. 

Solas looked up, Iseshena was a picture of frustration, or perhaps desperation, all drawn and tense and waiting for his words. He let himself find the truth he’d been withholding from her. “May I kiss you, wife?”

Iseshena let out a shaky breath, dropping her head with a laugh drawn from worry. She sagged a little, as though the tension had been keeping her upright. A little breathless she muttered, “I thought you were never going to ask.”

“For a moment there, so did I.” Solas confessed. But now it seemed he had to put his words to action. A terrifying prospect indeed. He didn’t move, couldn’t force himself to. His mind had gone completely blank. 

Iseshena approached him carefully, and she placed her hand against his shoulder, she blinked up to check that it was alright. 

Solas looked down at her touch, warm and real and - “is this where you demand my shirt off?” He teased, before he placed his hand on top of hers, thumb stroking small circles across her flesh in a way that he hoped was as soothing to her as it was to him. 

She laughed, pressing up onto her toes, scrunching her hand in his shirt to keep her balance. “Yes, and where you make it look particularly convincing when you unprompted use your tongue like that?”

When he had the gall to look offended she closed the gap, finally pressing her lips to his. 

Iseshena tasted like apricots. And his hand found her hip, and pulled her against him, moving back at the same time to sit upon Elgar’nan’s state table. Iseshena followed the movement, ending up on her knees, straddling his hips and an arm hooked around his neck. “

Suddenly you’re forward?” She gasped, laughing. Before pressing a kiss against his jaw. 

“You’re the one on top of me,” he retorted in a moan, though the bite of his words were lost as he tugged her shirt over her head. Slow fingers tracing over every curve of her. 

He couldn’t quite believe it, didn’t quite believe it. There had to be some mistake, surely?

“Stop it,” she whispered to his ear. 

“Stop what?” He froze his palm raised off aher waist and his other hand detangling from her curls. 

She drew her face to his, pressing their foreheads together, fixing him with an everite look, “you’re overthinking, stop.” 

He chuckled. And he gave in, a sacrifice of self, that was altogether willing. An offering to her, the woman who’d cared enough to feed the griffons.

“Well I love what you have done with the place,” Andruil drawled, running her fingers across a tattered rag that had once been a curtain. She had a goblet of wine that she dropped onto the ground. The liquid spiralling outward before splattering across the tiles. “Oh,  _ Hetaera, _ ” she didn’t look apologetic at all, “would you clean that up?”

Ghilan’nain looked embarrassed. But, she didn’t say a word to contradict Andruil, only placed a hand on Andruil’s elbow to guide her away. Flinching back as Andruil shrugged her off. So the Mother of Monsters looked away, as though no seeing would excuse Andruil’s poor behaviour. 

Andruil glared at Iseshena, her nose twitched in challenge. But, she looked to Iseshena rather like an overgrown griffin, all feathers flapping and birdbrained. 

_ Perhaps Ghilan’nain’s experiments had been successful after all?  _

After a tense moment, Iseshena glanced down at the stain, before saying simply, “no.” She gave Andruil an approximation of a smile, a touch mocking. “Excuse me,” she said a little loudly, “I should get some air.”

That was the cue. The moment, the choice made. 

The code that she would act, and retreat from the party and find Fen’Harel in the corridor. Her words were loud enough that he caught them, and shrugged out of a conversation with Falon’Din to rest his hand against the small of her back and go with her to the balcony overlooking the ruins of the Golden City. 

“They’re all here,” Iseshena whispered, two parts terrified and one part trembling with excitement. “Are we ready?”

He looked down at her, scooping an arm around her waist to press a quick, stolen kiss against her lips, before he answered her with the affirmative. “Yes.” 

When he brought it out, the Orb of Destruction looked small to Iseshena, barely bigger than both of her fists pressed together. For the first time she had a flicker of doubt that the plan was going to work. 

Surely that small sphere didn’t have the power to rip reality apart?

But it was just the first piece in a chain reaction that would tear through their planet in a matter of minutes. The activation devices had been adjusted to account for terrain variations and they would pass the power along the network, like a game of leapfrog. 

The ‘Veil,’ Sylaise had called it, would be up in minutes. 

In front of him, Solas lifted the Orb of Destruction. Cradling it between his palms, not quite touching it. It glowed faintly green and cast his face with unexpected shadows. He looked at her over the fingerprint pattern of the Orb. “Before we do this, I should tell you something.”

“Yes?”

“I love you.” 

Iseshena smiled, soft and a little shy, before she took her place behind him. Pressing her cheek against his shoulder blades, crossing her arms over his chest, her mended binding bracelet digging slightly into his sternum. “And I you.” 

Just before Solas tore through reality, he threw a barrier across the two of them, to protect them from the worst of it. She was going to dream with him, and she would make sure they would be forever good dreams. Against his back, he felt her breath hitch and she gripped him tighter. 

An anchor to keep them together, whatever would happen. 

  
  
  



	6. Epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Epilogue ties it to the Rituals of the Dalish - however, feel free to ignore if being read as a stand-alone.

Water dripped from unfriendly looking stalactites in a cave, somewhere near the town of New Crestwood. Iseshena and Solas had ridden out from the fortress of Caer Bronach just as the sun was setting on her hart. 

Solas had taken her there, with the promise of ancient ruins, to tell her the truth. But he was a coward, and he’d told her about her  _ vallaslin  _ instead. And in probably the worst conceived idea he had ever had, he’d offered to take them from her. Working a spell that he had stolen from June lifetimes ago and adapted to remove the  _ vallaslin  _ without pain. Something June had never bothered with. 

Iseshena was stood over a little pool of still water, admiring her newly bare face. Without the lines of Mythal on her face, she was beautiful, but that wasn’t surprising. What was a little disconcerting was that she had allowed him to take them at all. 

Watching her tilting her face back and forth, she whispered, “I look so young.” 

Nothing about this evening was going to plan. Barefaced, he could only picture her older, Ancient. Like him. Born immortal. And his imagination had run away with him. 

What if she’d been there with him back then?What if he’d told her his plan, what if she’d agreed to it? But that Iseshena wasn’t real, he put words into her mouth, he had taken her agency and arrogantly bound her to agree with him. 

But, he had to admit that Iseshena slotted too easily within his past, he could almost convince himself that she had always been with him. That June had caught him because he had seen her, that he had been instantly drawn to her. Perhaps she would have realised his mistake with the activation devices? 

“You have a rare and marvelous spirit. In another world…”  _ I wish you'd been there with me in Elvhenan. I love you. I wish I hadn’t had to do it all by myself… _ “I can't. I am sorry.”

  
  
  



End file.
